Tied to the Tracks

by Rosina Lippi

  Every book Miss Zula had written was here, in first and more modern editions, many of the jackets sporting silver or gold embossed medallions for one literary prize or another, a galaxy of small stars. Angie wondered if Tony had already been here to shoot stills. The truth was he probably had been, but she should have been with him, making contacts and setting up interviews. Instead she had been hiding in Ivy House. That would have to change.

  In the middle of the display of books was a photo of a very young Zula in a cap and gown, accepting a diploma from a portly man. A newspaper article dated 1952, matted and framed, stood beside it on a carved oak easel. The headline was still dark and clear: “Ogilvie College Awards Diploma to Local Negro Woman.”

  “What a difference fifty years make, eh?”

  Angie jumped, a hand pressed to her heart, and then stepped back against the window.

  “Rob.”

  Rob Grant, a younger, darker, and more easygoing version of his brother, had never been one to stand on formalities. He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a hug that smelled of the bakery bag he held in one hand, yeast and dark sugars and cinnamon.

  “Angie, I was wondering when I’d run into you. Don’t you look good.”

  “So do you. So you ended up back in Ogilvie after all.”

  “Where else, for one of Lucy Ogilvie’s boys? And Kai—my wife?—Kai is on the math faculty here.”

  “I heard that someplace. You look happy.”

  “I gave up on the law and I married well. What’s not to be happy? Hey.” He held up the bakery bag. “I’m on my way home for a late breakfast. Kai wants to meet you, and there’s coffee on. Unless you’ve already had breakfast?”

  “I ate with Miss Zula and Maddie.”

  Rob raised an eyebrow. “The Rose girls’ monthly goddaughter breakfast? Miss Zula must like you. So are you coming?”

  His eyes were brown while John’s were blue, and Angie remembered quite suddenly playing poker with the two of them on a rainy Sunday afternoon. He had been in law school then, and she had liked him tremendously. He was the only good thing to remember about that particular weekend, and she had the idea that he might actually understand, if she were to tell him what she was about to do.

  She said, “I am on my way to find John. There are some things I need to talk to him about.”

  “In that case”—he took her elbow—“you’ll have to come along. We share the house with him . . .” His voice trailed away.

  Angie gave him her best, clearest, most intense smile. “Until he gets married. It’s okay, Rob.”

  “Until we find a place of our own,” Rob said, but he gave her an appraising look that said he might have given up the law, but still understood a great deal about the way people lied to themselves, and others.

  It was a ten-minute walk, long enough for Rob to give her his personalized, highly suspect history of the neighborhood and for Angie to begin to panic. He was in the middle of an anecdote that involved the adolescent Grant boys, a tire swing, a six-pack of beer, and somebody called Louanne who was now the chief of police, when Angie stopped just where she was.

  Rob looked at her expectantly. “Rethinking?”

  She nodded.

  “You know,” he said slowly, “I live there, too. You’re welcome in my home anytime.”

  “You think he won’t want to see me.” If she could have snatched the words out of the air, she would have done that.

  “Oh, he wants to see you,” Rob said. “As much as you want to see him.”

  She hiccupped a laugh, started to say something that was a lie, and stopped herself.

  “I never took you for a coward,” said Rob Grant.

  Angie hesitated a moment, and then caught up with him. After a while she said, “Do you mind very much having to move out?”

  Rob shrugged. “I thought I would, but it turns out that looking for a house with Kai is an experience not to be missed. And John would never really be happy anyplace else. Something the Rose girls have yet to figure out, as they are still trying to talk him into moving into Old Roses.”

  “Old Roses?”

  “The family place. You were there for Miss Junie’s birthday. The occasion of the wayward arrow? The Rose girls have got it in their heads that Caroline should stay there for good and keep an eye on Miss Junie.”

  “And what does Caroline want?”

  Rob stopped short, a thoughtful look on his face. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say one way or the other. It’s mostly her sisters who talk about it.”

  Angie thought of Caroline Rose at Miss Zula’s table, and how she had disappeared from the conversation as soon as Harriet had come in.

  She said, “Miss Zula asked Caroline to work with me and Rivera. She said Caroline is the best source of information about the town, next to her mother.”

  After a while Rob said, “It’s true that Caroline is one of those people who’s good at listening, so she hears a lot.” He gestured with his chin. “Here we are. It’s not Old Roses, but it’s where my mother grew up and we’re all fond of it.”

  Set back in a garden was a pale yellow two-story house. The windows were tall and narrow, with white woodwork and shutters, and a deep porch spanned the entire width of the house. The garden was in full bloom with flowers Angie couldn’t name, and more flowers bloomed in pots along the edge of the porch and between chairs piled with cushions. And, inevitably, there was John Grant sitting on the brickwork step, looking directly at her.

  He had just come off the river. His skin was still flushed with exercise, water glistening in his short hair, his skin damp. Sweat was shining on his bare shoulders and in the hollow of his throat and on his legs, and Angie understood one thing: she should never, ever, have come.

  SEVEN

  I am going to say this straight out: I don’t think it’s proper to be digging around in matters that don’t concern you and that you can’t understand because you are, forgive my bluntness, Yankees. I don’t know what the university was thinking, inviting you all to come pry in our business, and I have written them a letter saying just that. The past is past. Leave it be.

  Your name: none of your business.

  I have a story you might want to hear about the summer of 1973, when my second cousin Anita Bryant came to visit. It has got nothing to do with Miss Zula but it’s a good story anyway.

  Your name: Howard Stillwater. I own Stillwater Used Cars, and can be found there six days a week from seven in the morning ’til six at night. When you get ready to replace that pitiful excuse for a vehicle you drove down here, come and see me, I’ll do you up right.

  It made perfect sense, John Grant told himself, that his brother would take it upon himself to force this reunion. Suddenly the wound on his upper thigh, mostly healed, began to itch. He pulled the towel from around his neck and laid it over his lap while he watched Rob cross Lee Street with Angie beside him, and he tried to think what he could possibly say to her, given the mood she was in.

  It was not something he could forget in five years or fifty, the way Angie Mangiamele’s face gave away her temper. The only comfort, and it was a small one, was that she wasn’t wearing the old Nirvana T-shirt she had had on this morning when he saw her by the river. She had changed into a different, equally familiar shirt, two sizes too big, an old Hawaiian print with a tear in the pocket. The T-shirt, he imagined, she had left hanging on the post of her bed.

  John closed his eyes and leaned forward, forearms propped on his knees, hands hanging.

  “A little early for a nap, isn’t it?”

  “Rob, I think I hear your wife calling you.”

  When he opened his eyes she was there, five feet away. Her hair had grown out again, a coiling mass that reached halfway down her back, dark brown with hints of red in the light. There were some new things—a scar at the corner of her mouth, another piercing in her right ear—but mostly she was still Angie, unforgettable. She was looking at Rob, who had a hand on her shoulder.

>   “I know when I’m not wanted. We’ll be waiting on the back porch.”

  She gave him a tight nod and a tighter smile, and then he was gone, but not before he threw John a particular look, the one that said he had doubts about his big brother’s ability to handle the situation.

  There was a moment’s silence filled in by the sound of a lawnmower’s ineffective sputter and, more insistent, birdsong. John was thinking that Rob was right, he had no chance in the world of handling this situation, when Angie spoke.

  “Is that a mockingbird?” She was looking up into the oak tree.

  John shifted a little. “A thrush, I think.”

  “A thrush. I’ve been meaning to go to the library to find a tape on birdsong. So I know what I’m hearing. And a book on flowers.” She was looking at the garden, no doubt because she didn’t want to look at him. The shadows moved over her face and neck and touched her shirt and the strong hands and the faded jeans. He was glad she stood so far away, and frustrated by it, too, which was ridiculous, which was insupportable.

  He said, “Did you stop by just to say hello?”

  And saw that he had made the first mistake, as he knew he must, and he always did, with this woman. The color climbed in her face.

  “Am I intruding?”

  “No,” he said, quietly. “No, you’re not. I’m glad to see you.”

  She produced a small, dry laugh. “I just wanted to ask you a couple questions.”

  John studied his hands where they gripped his knees, white knuckled. He stood up. “Best we go inside, then.”

  She took a step backward. “Afraid I’m going to embarrass you?”

  He sat down again. “Can we call a truce before we get started?”

  “I didn’t know we were at war.”

  John forced himself to take a few deep breaths. “Of course not. Go ahead with your questions.”

  She said, “Does Miss Zula know that you and I used to date?”

  He had expected something very different, and at first could hardly make sense of the question.

  “Date?”

  “Date, yes. You do remember.”

  “Of course I remember. I’m just not sure I’d use that word. I don’t know how she would know. I never mentioned it to her. Why?”

  Angie’s mouth pursed itself. “And Caroline Rose? Have you mentioned it to her?”

  John held on to her gaze, though it cost him a great deal. “I haven’t raised the subject yet.”

  “Why not?”

  John heard the screen door open behind him. Angie’s face told him that it wasn’t Rob standing there.

  “Let me introduce you to my sister-in-law,” John said. “I may have been slow to bring Caroline up to date, but there’s no keeping secrets from Kai.”

  The house was just exactly what Angie expected. Solid old furniture, simple, elegant, comfortable. Not a pile of paper in sight, or a book out of place. A few small watercolors, an antique map in a gilded frame, a sampler: Jane Ogilvie 1825. No photos, not of his parents or grandparents or anyone else. Nor would she find them anywhere else in the house.

  When she took him home to Hoboken the first time, John had spent a lot of time going over what Tommy Apples liked to call the family shrine, a whole wall full of photographs, some more than a hundred years old. John had been sincerely interested in Angie’s family, but could not be bothered with the artifacts of his own.

  This comfortable, well-used, strictly kept house was much like an expensive hotel room. It was one of the things that she had only begun to understand about John, this way he went about constructing a world for himself free of conflict and unpleasant memories, and it was immediately familiar.

  On the other hand, Rob’s wife took her by surprise. Kai Watanabe looked like a teenage boy’s geisha fantasy, but presented herself like the theoretical mathematician she was. Small and slender with a long veil of shining black hair, she came at Angie so directly and with so much undisguised curiosity that only two choices presented themselves: to be affronted or charmed. The fact that Kai’s smile was as honest and unassuming as her gaze made the choice easier.

  On the screened rear porch, Angie stood at the old oak table that had been set for a late breakfast and tried to sound regretful.

  “I’ve eaten, but thank you.”

  “Sit,” said John, and pointed at a chair.

  “How rude,” said Rob.

  “Me?” said John and Angie together.

  “Both of you,” said Rob. “Have coffee at least, Angie. Kai will think you don’t like her.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Kai, holding out a coffee cup. “He is teasing. You will like me and I will like you and now that’s settled.”

  Her English was excellent, save for a distinct and unusual rhythm. To Angie’s ear it sounded as though Kai had learned British English that was now giving way to her husband’s slow Georgia drawl.

  She sat down, and then John sat down across from her with his back to the wall.

  The immediate problem, as far as John was concerned, was not the fact that Angie Mangiamele was sitting at his breakfast table with a barely disguised scowl on her face. As odd as it was to have her here, and as disturbing as this discussion promised to be, there was a bigger issue, and that was the fact that Caroline and all of her sisters would be here in an hour for one of their planning meetings. What he didn’t want, what he couldn’t afford, was to add the subject of Angie to flower arrangements and discussions about color schemes.

  “Isn’t this cozy,” said Rob, looking around the table with true and undisguised pleasure. He put a sticky bun the size of a wagon wheel on his plate. “How is your filming coming along, Angie?”

  Angie sat very straight with both hands wrapped around her coffee cup. She was pale, and there were shadows under her deep-set eyes. John counted the tines on his fork.

  “We aren’t actually shooting yet,” Angie said. “There’s a lot of prep work to do. As far as Miss Zula is concerned, there are a few mysteries to solve.”

  “Mysteries?” Kai’s small, neat head turned, and the veil of her hair swung with it.

  “Yes. The biggest mystery is why Miss Zula seems set on throwing Caroline Rose and me together. Any idea why that might be, John?”

  Kai put her hands flat on the table to either side of her plate. “I like her,” she said to Rob. “She asks good questions. Do you play poker, Angie?”

  “Don’t answer that, Angie. My wife is a card-counting shark.”

  “I could teach you to throw craps,” Angie said to Kai, and in spite of the seriousness of the situation and his growing uneasiness, John had to smile at the idea of these two women at a craps table.

  She said, “And about questions, the thing is, I keep asking them until I get answers. John?”

  A small V-shape crease had appeared between Angie’s brows. It was true that she wouldn’t stop asking; her persistence was one of the things that made her good at her work.

  “Maybe you should ask Miss Zula directly,” John said. “I can’t read the woman’s mind.”

  “I can,” said Rob.

  John sent his brother an irritated look, but Rob was unconcerned.

  “Well, then,” said Angie. “Enlighten me.”

  “It’s simple. Miss Zula’s main joy in life is throwing people who interest her together, just to see what happens. A year down the line there’ll be a new short story in The New Yorker or Harper’s, unless you and Caroline disappoint her by getting along.”

  “I like Caroline just fine,” said Angie. “You’re saying that while we’re filming Miss Zula, she’ll be taking notes on us?”

  Rob said, “That’s not it, exactly. She does get most of her stories from watching people, but she’s not likely to make it obvious enough to identify you.”

  “Unless you’re Button Ogilvie,” said Kai.

  “Zula hasn’t buttoned anybody for years,” said John. “You’d really have to be on her bad side to get that kind of attention.”

/>   “I’ll bite,” said Angie. “Who is Button Ogilvie, and what did she do of such great significance that she’s been transformed into a verb by Zula Bragg?”

  “It’s an old family feud,” said Rob. “Button Ogilvie is big on revisionist history, and Miss Zula finally struck back by writing Button into a novel—”

  “Miss Callie,” said Angie, and a look of understanding came over her face, her eyes bright as she put things together and then filed them away for further reference. “Miss Callie is Button Ogilvie? Oh, it must have been fun, when Sweet-Bitter came out. Who else has been buttoned? I’m interested.”